Email received 1/12/09

Email received January 12, 2009
3rd area: Mossoro
5th companion: Elder Kittler

hi everybody

happy birthdays this week to alisse t and riggs bryan. everyone is growing up so fast. i have to apologize to many people cuz the annoying mail system is having many problems i guess, many letters i sent over 2 or 3 months ago still havent arrived and likewise i havent received many either.

as for everything here, i guess the lord is just still trying to humble me a lot or something. (but i have been assuring Him lately that its working so hopefully things will cool down). my companion elder kittler is almost helpless... its not just the personal stuff, like how he´s a jerk and has a bad temper and all the other stuff, cuz that stuff i can deal with. but when the missionary work itself here is suffering because of him, thats when it gets really difficult. i am doing my best to work around this and we are thankfully having some success but we could be having a lot more.

we are now sleeping on the ground outside every night, cuz it gets too unbearably hot to sleep in the house at night. outside we get a little breeze. speaking of heat heres an interesting fact about mossoró: its so hot here, that the water actually comes out of the faucet hot. when we fill up the baptismal font its like a jacuzzi.

speaking of baptism we were able to baptize Jandson yesterday (picture), i dont know if i talked about him last week but he is the cousin of a member, not to be confused with Cléber, who we will baptize this week. but we let a member of the branch do the baptism cuz yesterday he received the priesthood. the baptismal font in the pic looks like a normal one in a normal chapel cuz it is, we ran out of water in our chapel so we had to travel to another town to baptize him, and we almost didnt get to cuz we had no way to get there, but finally we found a guy in the branch to drive us. for this i feel bad for people here who have cars, cuz theres usually only 1 or 2 in the ward so they have to do everything for everyone.

this week we will finish up with cléber, and continue to work with cíntia, who sadly might have to be cut out cuz her dad is not letting her continue again. he was doing this with the missionaries a while back, then started to be alright about it, now is going back. we marked a night this week to go there and talk with him, but it might just turn in to him exploding on us. we´ll see. one other main investigator i am really hoping for is the dad of a member family, and i really hope we have success with him cuz if so we will complete a family. i will explain more next week if things go well.

there are some good members here but i still miss a lot in cidade verde. i feel like that is my home ward its weird. well i pray for success this week and for all of you at home.

elder sherwood